Lara

by Anna Pasternak

  In the back seat of the car, Khesin whispered to Olga that it was he who had sent Isidor Gringolts to her. Olga gasped, realising she had been completely manipulated into persuading Boris to write the letter to Khrushchev. ‘They knew BL was stubborn and incapable of taking orders. So they had found a way through me, taking advantage of my fears and thoughtlessness. Knowing that no official person would ever have won me round, they had put this “nice boy”, an “admirer” of Pasternak, onto me, and it had worked.’

  As Olga battled with her feelings of self-reproach, that she had allowed herself to be so thoroughly duped, Polikarpov turned to her and said to her: ‘We’re now relying entirely on you. You must set his mind at rest.’ Polikarpov seemed unusually concerned that Pasternak might not agree to come to Moscow.

  When they reached Peredelkino, dacha No 3, was already surrounded by other official cars, including some from the Writers’ Union. Olga was told to wait in another car, as everyone waited for Irina’s arrival. Zinaida would not have opened her door to Olga, but she was better disposed towards her daughter. Olga was instructed to afterwards take Boris back to her Potapov apartment, and wait for official passes to be organised for them.

  It was already dusk by the time that Irina arrived at Peredelkino, the official cars waiting ominously in the lane outside Pasternak’s house. A ‘frightened-looking’ Zinaida came out to meet her. She told Irina that Boris would get dressed at once. Boris appeared wearing the grey overcoat and hat he often travelled in. Instantly sizing up the situation outside, he agreed to get into the car. He seemed ebulliently cheerful, only complaining that Irina hadn’t given him time to change his trousers. He had also concluded that he was about to meet Khrushchev. ‘Mama and I sat next to him at the back of the black car and we started our journey to Moscow with our escort,’ said Irina.

  I remember with elation all the dangers of this trip. BL was in great form. Despite my mother’s admonition, who kept whispering to him to keep the volume down as she was pointing to the chauffeur – ‘Boris, don’t be so loud, he’s listening’ – we spoke about everything without a care in the world.

  His excellent sense of humour probably acted as some kind of protection for him. And at that specific time, when such an important decision with potentially dangerous consequences was about to be made, he was like an actor completely engrossed in his part. The discussion which was about to take place at the Central Committee was like a drama reaching its climax, and he was rehearsing his role in the car. ‘First, I will tell them that they interrupted my walk, which means that I had to keep on a pair of trousers that were not ironed. I’ll tell them that I didn’t have time to get changed.’ When we told him that nobody would be interested, he continued: ‘Not at all, I must tell them otherwise they will think “Here is the scarecrow for which the whole world is boiling.”’ Left in no doubt that he would say exactly that, we burst into hysterical laughter.

  They were followed back to Moscow by a cavalcade of cars, one containing Polikarpov.

  Up in the apartment, Boris paced the floor and drank strong black tea while Olga changed. He shouted through to her not to put on any make-up or wear jewellery. They often clashed over this – Boris thought that Olga had such beautiful natural looks that she needed neither adornment nor enhancement. Irina took a ‘small vial of valerian, pills for the heart and a bottle of water’ – an emergency kit in case the talk became heated. The whole scene was so surreal, remembered Irina, that the three of them were in a mood of ‘almost hysterical gaiety’.

  When they arrived at Entrance No 5 of the Central Committee, Staraya Square, Boris went up to the guard and started to explain that he had no documents with him except for his writers’ card – ‘you know, the Writers’ Union you and your colleagues have just thrown me out of’. He then went on to talk about his trousers in exactly the way that he had said he would. The astonished guard just mumbled that everything would be fine and waved Boris and Olga through. Irina was left to wait in the hallway in charge of Boris’s bottles of medicine, in case he was taken ill.

  As they walked upstairs, Boris winked at Olga. ‘It will be interesting now, you’ll see,’ he said, convinced that he was about to enter a room and meet Khrushchev. But when the door to the inner sanctum opened they were astonished to see Polikarpov again. Strangely, he was freshly shaved and had changed his clothes. The whole scene appeared to have been staged so that it looked as if the trip to Peredelkino had never happened, as if he had been sitting at his desk all day.

  Polikarpov cleared his throat, rose solemnly to his feet and ‘in a voice befitting a town crier’ announced that in view of his letter to Khrushchev, Pasternak would be ‘allowed to remain in the Motherland’. But, he continued, the writer would have to find a way to make peace with the Soviet people. ‘There is nothing we can do at the moment to calm the anger,’ adding that in the following day’s issue of Literaturnaya Gazeta this anger would be sampled across the pages.

  This was not the meeting that Boris had anticipated and he erupted in rage. ‘Aren’t you ashamed, Dmitri Alexeyevich? What do you mean “anger”! You have your human side, I can see, so why do you come out with these stock phrases? “The people! The people” – as though it were something you could just produce from your own trouser pockets! You know perfectly well that you really shouldn’t use this word “people” at all.’

  Polikarpov was taken aback, but he needed Pasternak’s acquiescence. Sucking in his breath, mustering all his patience, he tried again: ‘Now look here, Boris Leonidovich, the whole business is over, so let’s make things up and everything will soon be all right again …’ and, giving Boris a friendly pat on the shoulder: ‘Goodness me, old fellow, what a mess you’ve landed us in.’

  Boris was incensed at being addressed as ‘old fellow’ in Olga’s presence. According to Olga he still thought of himself as ‘young and healthy, and the hero of the hour into the bargain’. Impatiently, he pushed Poliparkov’s hand aside: ‘Will you kindly drop that tone! You cannot talk to me like that.’

  Polikarpov continued in his ‘friendly’ manner: ‘Really now, here you go, sticking a knife into the country’s back and we have to patch it all up.’

  Boris jumped to his feet: ‘I will ask you to take those words back. I do not wish to speak with you anymore,’ he said, striding for the door.

  Polikarpov threw Olga a despairing look: ‘Stop him, stop him, Olga Vsevolodovna.’

  ‘You bait him like this and expect me to stop him?’ Olga replied. ‘You must take your words back.’

  Clearly rattled and wary of exciting Pasternak further, Polikarpov mumbled: ‘I do, I do.’

  Boris hesitated by the door. Olga asked him to come back and the conversation continued more civilly. Boris was told that the only thing that the officials insisted on was that he was to have no contact with the foreign press. As they left, Polikarpov also warned Olga that Pasternak might have to sign another public letter.

  In the corridor, on the way back to Irina, Boris said to Olga: ‘They should have held their hands out to me and everything would have been different. But they’re unable to: they are so mean-spirited. They have no feelings. They are not people but machines. See how terrible they are, these walls here, and everybody inside them is like an automaton.’

  Irina, Olga and Boris were driven back to Peredelkino in a government car. Boris was back in high spirits again. He acted out the whole conversation for Irina, ignoring Olga plucking at his sleeve to encourage him to quieten down in front of the chauffeur/informer. During a lull in conversation, Irina quoted some lines from Pasternak’s epic poem Lieutenant Schmidt. First published in 1926, the poem is based on words spoken by Lieutenant Schmidt, a famous figure in the 1905 Revolution, on the eve of his execution for mutiny. The verses became so frequently quoted in Moscow during the campaign of persecution against Pasternak that some people mistook them to be a new poem written by him in 1958. As Irina recited it, Boris’s exuberance drained away. ‘Just think – how right,
how true it is,’ he said mournfully.

  In vain, in years of turmoil,

  One seeks a happy ending –

  Some are fated to kill – and repent –

  While others go to Golgotha …

  I suppose you never flinch

  From wiping out a man.

  Ah well, martyrs to your dogma,

  You too are victim of the times …

  I know the stake at which

  I’ll die will be the boundary mark

  Between two different epochs,

  And I rejoice at being so elect.

  Olga never forgave herself for drafting the letter to Khrushchev. She also berated her and Boris’s ‘lack of resolve, perhaps even our folly, our failure to recognise “the great moment” which instead turned into one of shame’. She constantly wondered whether the renunciation of the Nobel Prize was more an act of defiance on Boris’s part or of their joint faint-heartedness. Yet she recognised that it was only her abject state of panic that prevented her from seeing through Gringolts and acting on his provocation. She later wrote: ‘That letter should never have been sent – never! But we sent it. It was my fault.’

  11

  A Beast at Bay

  During his meeting with Polikarpov, Pasternak had asked for the postal ban, which had been reinstated for three days, to be lifted. During the whole vicious campaign against Pasternak nothing depressed him more than being denied access to his correspondence. Eighteen months after the Nobel Prize award, Boris had received approximately 25,000 letters. Now, he found, the post lady at Peredelkino brought two huge bags of mail, which had piled up during the previous few days; the ban had been lifted.

  As Polikarpov had predicted, the next edition of the Literaturnaya Gazeta lambasted the writer, reflecting the ‘wrath of the people’. Yet it was the letters of support which softened these blows. One anonymous but particularly memorable note read: ‘Dear Boris Leonidovich, Millions of Russian people are happy at the appearance in our literature of a truly great work. History will not treat you harshly. The Russian People.’

  In his overflowing mail bags there were foreign newspapers and magazines containing reactions of public figures and fellow authors to his hounding. ‘I shall give him a house to make his life in the West easier,’ wrote Ernest Hemingway. ‘I want to create the conditions he needs to carry on with his writing. I can understand how divided Boris must be in his own mind just now. I know how deeply, with all his heart, he is attached to Russia. For a genius such as Pasternak, separation from his country would be a tragedy. But if he comes to us, we shall not disappoint him. I shall do everything in my power to save this genius for the world. I think of Pasternak every day.’ Jawaharlal Nehru stated: ‘We believe that if a well-known writer expresses views which conflict with the dominant ones in his country, he should be respected rather than subjected to any kind of restrictions.’ The French journalist Georges Altman concluded: ‘I make bold to suggest that Pasternak is a much better representative of the great Russia of yesterday and today than is Mr Khrushchev.’

  ‘The whole world knows that the Union of Soviet Writers would much rather have seen the Nobel Prize go to Sholokhov than to Pasternak,’ wrote Albert Camus. ‘But this was not something that could influence the Swedish Academy, which was bound to take a detached view of the literary merits of both these writers.’ The Academy’s choice, ‘which is by no means a political one, is simply a recognition of Pasternak’s achievements as a writer. It is a long time since Sholokhov has produced anything new, while Doctor Zhivago has appeared everywhere in the world as an incomparable work greatly superior to the bulk of the world’s literary production. This great novel about love is not anti-Soviet, as some people say – it has nothing to do with any particular party; it is all-embracing.’

  According to Pasternak, Albert Camus became a ‘cordial acquisition’. Boris also struck up correspondences with T. S. Eliot, John Steinbeck, Thomas Merton, Aldous Huxley, Hemingway and Nehru. Lydia Pasternak wrote that although Boris suffered intensely during this time, ‘to a very great extent this triumph of spiritual happiness was due to the spontaneous expression of love and gratitude poured out to him in letters from thousands of individuals from all over the world, overwhelming, unbelievable, unsought for, and completely unexpected after decades of disappointment and frustration’.

  On 4 November 1958, Boris was sitting in Olga’s Moscow apartment with Irina and Mitia, contentedly going through the latest large batch of postal correspondence. The telephone rang. Olga asked Mitia to say that she was not at home. They were enjoying a rare moment of carefree togetherness, a brief respite from the hostilities around them which she wanted to savour. They heard Mitia say apologetically, as he covered the receiver with his hand: ‘Mother, one of the leaders is on the line.’

  It was Polikarpov. He announced to Olga that it was time for Pasternak to write an open letter to ‘the people’. His letter to Khrushchev was not enough.

  Boris diligently wrote a draft letter, which Olga took to the Central Committee the following day. Predictably, Polikarpov said that he and Olga would ‘have to do a little work’ on the letter. According to Olga, they amended the letter ‘like a pair of professional counterfeiters. We took isolated phrases written or said by BL on various different occasions and placed them together in such a way that white was turned into black.’

  Reward was instantaneous. Polikarpov promised that Pasternak’s translation of Faust would come out in a second edition and that he would waive the ban on them working for Goslitizdat. Their translation work would be resumed.

  Olga showed Boris the letter ‘in which practically all the words but none of the sentiments were his’. He simply waved his hand. Too fatigued to fight any more, he wanted the whole business over. He also desperately needed money to support the two households; the Big and Little Houses, and the many people he gave financial aid to. Olga looked on as Boris, doing ‘irreparable violence to himself’, signed the second letter. It was published in Pravda on Thursday 6 November.

  To any discerning Pravda reader, it was obvious that Pasternak’s hand had been forced. The letter explained why he had renounced the Nobel Prize for Literature, and his constant emphasis that every act that he took was voluntary suggested the complete opposite. Lines included: ‘When I saw the dimensions of the political campaign occasioned by my novel, and I realised that the Award was a political move which led to monstrous consequences, I sent my voluntary renunciation on my own initiative and without being forced by anyone.’ In the letter, ‘Pasternak’ concluded:

  In the course of this turbulent week I have not been subjected to persecution, and neither my life, freedom, nor anything else at all have been at stake. I wish to emphasise once more that all my actions have been voluntary. People closely acquainted with me know very well that nothing on earth can force me to play the hypocrite or go against my conscience. This has also been the case now. It does not need to be said that nobody has tried to compel me to do anything and that I make this statement with my own free will, with bright faith in the common future and my own, with pride in the age I live in, and in the people around me.

  As soon as the furore began to die down, Boris telegraphed his sisters, who he knew would be devastated by the Kremlin’s campaign against him: ‘Tempest not yet over do not grieve be firm and quiet. Tired loving believing in the future – Boris.’ The following month, on 11 December, Boris wrote to Lydia in English a loosely coded message of the scrutiny he was still under. ‘All the letters I receive arrive minutely examined of course. But if their number reaches up to twenty daily from abroad (there was a day where there came fifty-four foreign letters at once), your free and frankly written missive will not add or diminish much to or of that pile. I said to a Sw[iss] correspondent I owed my saved life to my far worldwide friends intervening. You owe it, he retorted, to Lara, [Olga] to her courageous activity.’

  As the dramatic year of 1958 drew to a close, the year-end tributes to Doctor Zhivago be
gan to come in. The London Sunday Times Books of the Year review said unhesitatingly that Doctor Zhivago was ‘the novel of the year’. In Italy Zhivago won the 1958 Bancarella Prize – a bestseller award and one of Italy’s two most significant literary prizes.

  After Pasternak’s second ‘penitential’ letter, he and Olga spent less time in Moscow. Pressures on them eased and once again the Little House became their sanctuary. ‘It seemed that we had survived our ordeal, and now we did everything we could to return to our usual way of life,’ said Olga. ‘Never before had we felt so close and been so at one with each other.’ When Irina saw Olga and Boris return to Izmalkovo, she ‘understood that all was well and the storm had now passed … Walking around Peredelkino, which we knew so well by heart, down to the last tree, was our true home. We were breathing again.’

  Olga took pleasure in watching Boris drink samogon, a home-distilled vodka, with her landlord Sergei Kuzmich. Boris was fascinated by the ‘earthy conversation of the sly, old scoundrel’. Olga and Boris would listen through the wall to Kuzmich’s conversations with his wife, who was an invalid. A regularly inebriated Kuzmich enjoyed winding his poor wife up about his conquests with women in his day, even boasting that he could easily get Olga to leave Boris for him. The laughter this provoked provided much-needed light relief for Olga and Boris. The couple would always be grateful to Kuzmich that they had found refuge in his house.

  Olga and Boris resumed their normal life. ‘Like a fish thrown back into the sea, he rediscovered the world and its daily routine with delight,’ wrote Irina. ‘He threw himself happily in the open arms of the rest of the world and what he found, I would almost describe as happiness. Before this time, every conversation had led back to Doctor Zhivago. From then on, nothing mattered more than his correspondences. He spoke about what his answers would be, he would show us all sorts of touching presents that came through the post – candles, postcards, knick-knacks.’